Couric and Monahan married in 1989 and had two daughters, Ellie and Caroline (now 22). But in 1998, Monahan died of colon cancer at age 42.

“I had never had something horrible happen to me before. Jay used to say I was born on a sunny day, and suddenly I wasn’t,” Couric told PEOPLE Editor-in-Chief Jess Cagle last year. “Like the cliches say, it made me appreciate things. It made me understand how important it is to say things in the here and now and not wait. When someone is important to you or means something to you, you need to tell them and not wait.”

“It’s also, I think, most profoundly given me a higher sense of purpose that I’m in a position to take this unimaginable pain and loss and try to do something positive with it,” she added.

“It took me a long time [to marry again], because I loved being married and I love being married now,” Couric told Cagle. “And I’m not a solitary person. I like company. And John is so funny. He’s just got this incredibly dry and wry sense of humor, and he doesn’t take himself too seriously. And he’s just fun to be around.”

Katie Couric and John Molner

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“Sometimes we get angry at each other. Sometimes I feel like he can be tough and I’m sure he thinks I’m insane,” she continued. “But for the most part, he’s really good company, you know? And I can totally be myself with him, sometimes maybe to a fault.”